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Paul Goldberg, Ph.D.

Professor of Archaeology, Department of Archeology, Boston University

Meadowcroft Rock Shelter

Meadowcroft Rock Shelter is a large sandstone rock shelter in Southwestern
Pennsylvania, not far from the border with West Virginia and it’s situated in a basically
sandstone and siltstone stream deposits that date to the Pennsylvanian or the
Carboniferous time period several hundred million years ago. It was excavated back in
the seventies and eighties by James Adovasio who, at the time, was at the University of
Pittsburgh and now is at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania.

What makes the site so controversial and interesting is that during the excavation they
succeeded in getting a number of radio carbon dates, I think, if I remember correctly,
somewhere in the neighbourhood of about sixty radio carbon dates that are all in
stratigraphic order.

The issue that came up after dating all this was that the lowest ones which had
archeological material in them gave dates around thirteen or fourteen thousand years
old that would indicate or indicated at the time that we have pre-clovis occupation in this
part of the world in the Eastern part of the United States.

This led to a bloodbath in the archeological literature particularly the society for the
American archaeology’s journal, American Antiquity, where, back and forth, people were
blood letting and accusing the other...yes it is that old...no it’s not that old. And people
claimed that this was because the site is situated in cold bearing sandstones which is
common for this kind of deposits...rock types for this time period and location that people
claim the earlier dates presenting contamination by earlier coal that’s well beyond the
age of radio carbon.

As a result, the dates that they have have been made older by the results of this
contamination of charred material that is several hundred years old. And this debate, I’d
say, was never really resolved completely.

There are still some people who still don’t believe it and Adovasio came out with a book
a few years ago that kind of summarizes the experiences of Meadowcroft Rock Shelter
and try to lay to rest, if you will, the validity of these sort of pre-clovis dates.